Bronze Endures Beneath The Sea

A bronze whistle once attached to the forward smokestack of the Titanic. It was blown again for an audience of some 90,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the opening there of the Titanic Artifact Exhibit.

Some 90,000 gathered to hear one of the R.M.S. Titanic's bronze whistles blown again, 87 years after it last sounded in vain to attract rescue ships to the sinking liner. The occasion was the opening on February 21 of the Titanic Artifact Exhibit at Union Depot in St. Paul, Minnesota. In lieu of steam, the 750-pound whistle was blown by compressed air.

Once mounted on the "unsinkable" liner's forward smokestack, the whistle and hundreds of other artifacts on exhibit were recovered between 1987 and 1993 by a submersible craft lowered to the shipwreck some 13,200 feet down in the cold Atlantic.

Besides the whistle, a few other brass, bronze or copper items, notably the ship's annunciator, a masthead light and a compass, are part of the exhibit. It is scheduled to be at the Tropicana Hotel in Atlantic City from May 29th to September 7th.

Left: The Titanic's brass annunciator, recovered from the bridge of the liner. This is the device by which orders were communicated to the engine roomTop: Titanic's masthead lamp